Keto Pecan Crescent Cookies

Tender pecan crescent cookies made with almond flour. These easy and delicious low carb cookies are a must make for the holiday season. They also make great snowball cookies too! And at 4g total carbs per serving, you can afford to indulge.

These low carb pecan crescent cookies are full of deep and emotional nostalgia for me. Pecan crescents were my father’s favorite Christmas cookie, and as many of you know, he died a few years ago right around Christmas. I miss him terribly but I am lucky I got so much time with him in the end.

I originally created this recipe in 2012, long before his diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He and his wife often used to spend Christmas with us when we lived in Boston, before he got too ill to travel. One holiday, I was inspired to attempt a low carb version of his beloved pecan crescents.

And I was absolutely delighted by how they turned out, and how pleased he was to indulge in my healthier version. They have the same soft and yet slightly crumbly texture of the original, and the same delicious pecan flavor coming through, without an ounce of sugar or gluten. The old man gave them two thumbs up.

It truly is astonishing what you can accomplish with a stick of butter, a bag of almond flour, and a willingness to experiment.

I decided that in his honour, I needed to update this old post and give them some pretty new photos.

How To Make Pecan Crescent Cookies

Pecan crescents are akin to shortbread and they have that unique sandy texture of a typical shortbread cookie. To shape them, you simply roll them into balls and then form them into crescents. Or you could simply leave them as balls and turn them into pecan snowballs.

Be sure to use finely chopped, toasted pecans. If the pecan chunks are too large, it’s harder to roll and shape the cookies properly.

Our traditional family recipe took brown sugar. At the time I first created these, I subbed in granulated Swerve and some molasses, but now that Swerve has a brown sugar substitute, it’s perfect for these cookies. If you can’t find Swerve Brown, try regular Swerve and 2 teaspoons of Yacon or molasses.

We used to decorate our cookies with some canned vanilla frosting that we thinned out with a little milk. Ugh, can you believe that? Now I simply whisk together a little vanilla glaze with powdered sweetener and heavy cream, and it’s just as good.

Sadly, there really aren’t any great sugar-free sprinkles out there. I just use a few holiday sprinkles on the frosted cookies to give them a festive flair.

You could also simply roll them in powdered sweetener. I did that to half of the pecan crescent cookies this time and they were lovely that way. If you want to make snowballs with these cookies, you simply roll them in powdered sweetener after they’ve cooled.

This recipe makes a lot of cookies so it’s perfect for holiday parties or gift-giving. The great thing is that the cookies freeze well both baked and unbaked. For unbaked, simply wrap the dough up tightly in plastic and freeze. Thaw before shaping and rolling into crescents.

If you want freeze the baked cookies, let them cool properly first. Freeze before frosting or rolling in powdered sweetener. They can last in the fridge for up to two months.

So there you go, Dad. I am sending a healthy keto version of your beloved Pecan Crescent Cookies into the world so that people can enjoy them. Miss you!

Want more great Keto Holiday Cookies?

Tender pecan crescent cookies made with almond flour. These easy and delicious low carb cookies are a must make for the holiday season. They also make great snowball cookies too! And at 4g total carbs per serving, you can afford to indulge.

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Nutritional Disclaimer

Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program.
I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them.
I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.

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Comments

My favorite Christmas Cookie is Norwegian Krumkaker. Delicios, thin and crispy, but unfortunatly not low carb and not gluten free. I would sooo much like to compose a recepie that is…
Now I have liked both Facebook sites, and are following both pages on Pinterest.
Best regards and a Merry Christmas
Tove

These look so fun… how great of you to recreate your father’s favorite treat!

Since I don’t celebrate Christmas (or didn’t until I married Eric), I’m not sure what Christmas cookies are… but I did make roasted chestnut cookies a few years ago and fell madly in love with them. So, that’s my answer 🙂

My favorite cookie? What a hard one. Of course it has to be gluten free and warm from the oven. What would Christmas be without moist sugar cookies …or gooey warm chocolate chip cookies…or matrimony date bars the Canadian way? It’s way too early in the morning to be thinking cookies but my tummy is growling already. COOKIES!

Love your FB page and have shared it with others. My cousin mentions it all the time to me. Would love to win the contest because I’m just at the beginning of my gluten free path and have so much to learn.

I love the pampered chef! I’ve only thrown one party by them myself but it was so much fun and their products are great. My favorite christmas cookie is a sugar cookie, I think. Though it is hard to argue with a classic chocolate chip.

My favorite Christmas cookie is actually Date Balls….rice krispies, dates, coconut all rolled together with a few walnuts sprinkled in! I know dates are very high in sugar and not so great for a low carber but if you ever do a recipe makeover of that cookie…please let me know! 🙂

Your Sour Cream Sugar Cookie sounds enticing, and I love making ancient recipes that have been in the family for generation, and passed down. Can you share the recipe? The cookies sound delicious, and I’d love to try them.

My favorite low carb Christmas cookies, so far, are your Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich cookies. The peppermint filling is delicious! (the coolness from the erythritol works wonderfully with the mint!) My hubby prefers the cookies without the filling…and they are fantastic without.

Your crescents look so pretty!
My favorite Christmas cookies are Pecan Lassies and I tell my mom each year, how horrible at making them I would be 🙂 so she will make them for me. She called me yesterday when she put them in the oven. Yep, I’m a brat some days, but she says she doesn’t mind.

My favorite Christmas cookie/s is any cookie that I can make with my grandchildren helping!!!!! I rarely get to see them because they live in another state and just watching them laughing and giggling when they are helping Grandma Red make them puts a big ol smile on my face everytime!!!!!!

Wow, I don’t know my favourite.
I’d guess spritz cookies. They are so fun to make & decorate with children.
However, when getting fancy, or sharing with friends, I usually head to a bar cookie, as they are easier to make in a multitude in a small kitchen.

Favorite Christmas cookie: My mom got a recipe from her sister’s mother-in-law (confusing) a long time ago for fruitcake cookies. Wow! I never really like fruitcake but these were different but also so colorful and I wish I had some right now!

I have all the ingredients to make your dad’s cookies though so I’ll give those a try instead! They can be frozen without the glaze? Would they be bad frozen with the glaze?

I’m sugar free gluten free now, but in the day I always enjoyed a frosted sugar cookie, pecan tassies, and sweeties. To tell you the truth I ABSOLUTELY LOVED COOKIES, they were my favorite dessert, and I had a hard time turning them down & with diabetes I finally had to say no – can you say I was a sugar addict junkie! FREE for 1.5 years YAY!!!

My favorite cookie (ever) is a Greek powdered cookie….the dough contains a splash of Ouzo for a nice annise flavor. I have been pretty successful at converting them to low carb and gluten free. Reminds me of being a kid in Greece long ago,

I’m going to make these!! Yum. My favorite Christmas cookie is actually a candy…. I make an old family recipe for pralines that rocks my world. Or used to, anyway! 🙂 If you could figure out how to make a sugar-free praline (is that even possible since it’s mostly sugar?) I’d love that! This year I’m going to try a low-carb sugared pecan recipe and see if it’s a satisfying replacement.

My favorite is my mother’s fruitcake cookies. I have been making them as low carb as possible for the last three years. Traditionally you soak the candied fruit in whiskey over night. These cookies are mostly pecans with a touch of fruit. I have got the flavor down pat. I’m still working on the texture. I substitute dried fruit for the candied cherries and pineapple, but finding sugar free dried fruit is a challenge.

I LOVE your Chocolate Peppermint cookies, actually! And now that I have to do low-carb (T1D), they are now my new favorite. I have always liked peppermint at Christmastime. Have a great holiday, and I’m praying I win the giveaway!

I follow you on FB. As for my favorite cookie, that is SO hard to say. I guess I would have to go with chocolate chip, but looking at what you have shared today, and someone suggested making them into wedding cookies, boy, close second!

Gosh what a great giveaway! Thank you! Favorite Christmas cookie is Oatmeal Raisin made by my mother in law. Have no clue what is in it but they are big and fabulous. Not seeing her this year and will miss those yummy cookies. Liked all FB and Pinterest pages. Love your blog!

favorite Christmas cookies are old family traditions with family names – Pennsylvania cookies: an almond hazelnut crescent and honey balls. Am trying to sub almond flour in each of them, will see how they turn out.

I love your website! I am on it everyday. I have been doing Clean Eating for 4 months and love finding new things to make. My favorite cookie is Shortbread or Peanut butter. Thanks for all you do to help us! I love Pampered Chef products, too. Have a great holiday season!

Until today, Dr. Davis’ Orange Cream Cookies were our favorite low carb, gluten free cookies. I just finished a double batch of your Pecan Cresents and these take first place – my husband and I agree that we don’t think the glaze is necessary – just because it is Christmas, I’ll probably do the glaze. I also think my next batch will not be the pretty little cresent shapes – I’m planning to just use the small cookie scoop and bake. Thanks for all you do for us – love your blog!

One of my favorite Christmas cookies is date balls rolled in coconut. I love that they freeze well, so we can enjoy them all season . . . plus they last slightly longer when you have to let them thaw (although they are pretty good frozen too!).

My favorite Christmas cookie is the Mexican Wedding Cake. It’s a cookie my mom used to make at Christmas time, so I have always thought of it as a Christmas cookie. I wonder if the Pecan cookie here would taste anything like them?

My favorite holiday cookie has always been chocolate crinkles. My Mom has made them as far back as I can remember. I can’t imagine celebrating the holiday without them. Guess I should learn to bake so I can make HER a batch. 🙂

My favorite Christmas cookie is Vanillekipfel (Austrian Vanilla Crescents). Growing up, my Austrian grandmother sent us a huge box of her homemade vanillekipfel every Christmas. We always were so excited when the brown paper wrapped box from grossmama arrived. The smell was heavenly and the taste even better! These cookies are traditionally made with a cup or two of almond and/or hazelnut flours so they were very easy for me to adapt to using only nut flours. This year I am going to use Swerve for the sweetner instead of coconut sugar so my blood sugar won’t spike! Dusted with some powdered erythritol they will look just like our family’s traditional vanillekipfel.
Your pecan crescent cookies look very scrumptious, I can hardly wait to make them.

My favorite holiday cookie has always been chocolate crinkles. My Mom has made them as far back as I can remember. I can’t imagine celebrating the holiday without them. Guess I should learn to bake so I can make HER a batch.

My favorite Christmas cookies are Russian Teacakes (also sometimes called Wedding Cookies). These seem to be fairly similar with the exception of being iced instead of rolled in powdered sugar. Being fairly recently diagnosed as diabetic, I really appreciate this low carb recipe!

I love the basic Spritz recipe that came with my cookie gun. It’s fun and easy to decorate, I have a Pampered Chef cookie scoop, and love it! I would love more of their items. They really do a good job with the products. Recipe sounds great! Thanks.

In my pre-low-carb days, my SIL gave me this recipe that became a Christmas-only standard: slice-and-bale a roll of sugar-cookie-dough into 36 cookies; stir amaretto liqueur into raspberry jam and spread a thin layer on the bottom of 18 cookies and press the another cookie bottom against the jam to make a sandwich. Melt some chocolate chips and add in a smidge of paraffin. Dip the 18 sandwiches halfway into the chocolate. I haven’t tried to replicate a LC version. I’m Liking on FB. Haven’t done Pinterest but this is an incentive to sign up and try it! P.S. I *ADORE* Pampered Chef! Best veg-peelers in the world… I actually tie one onto bridal-shower gifts! I have so many PC products in my kitchen!

Before I found out I had celiac disease…my favorite was my grama’s cutout cookies…we would bake and decorate them…I can almost still smell and imagine how wonderful they tasted. Thanks for the memories!!

It’s so hard to pick a favorite, I love so many of them. I guess my favorite today will be chocolate filled Italian cookies. Not sure if there is another name, it’s the name on the recipe when I received it from a little Italian lady from the northside of the city where I live.

Alfajores (pronounced alpha-whore-es 🙂 South American sandwich cookies filled with dulce de leche. I have plans to make them with your dulce de leche recipe but have failed at finding an adequate low carb grain free cookie that won’t fall apart the next day. Would love to win the Pampered Chef lot!

My favorite cookie is the Mexican wedding cakes…. cream cheese dough filled with almond and butter filling and dusted with powdered sugar. Obviously I can’t eat these anymore but maybe you can make a low carb version?! Would love to win this set!

My mom makes these cookies we call tea times, I have no idea where the recipe came from. They’re tiny pie cookies with a cream cheese sweet dough shell and gooey walnut filling. They are my favorite cookie ever, and we are making them together tomorrow! 🙂

Well, before I was diagnosed with diabetes a month ago, my favorite Christmas cookies were frosted sugar cookies. By next year, I think my favorite will be something from this site! It’s been a lifesaver. Ate your almond flour waffles for breakfast this morning!

Yum! Yet another great transformation!!!! Thank you for sharing your gift of gluten free baking and cooking. I send clients to you blog all the time. Will be making these cookies for an exchange Monday.

My favorite cookies are traditional sugar cookies. They bring back so many wonderful childhood memories: rolling & using the cookie cutters (I use my mom-in-law’s that she gave me over 30 years ago!), the smell of them baking, decorating them with the cream cheese Christmas-y frosting (each grandchild gets a specially decorated cookie with their name on it every year) and the my most favorite part- eating them!

THIS Pecan Crescent is my favorite cookie! Truly, before I turned to low carb eating, Pecan Sandies, Crescents, Mexican Wedding cookies were my absolute favorite and I could never get enough of them! Thank you SO much for creating this low carb, gluten free version. Without the sugar, I can actually stop at two (one serving) and be content. The flavor and texture are spot on. I didn’t even make the glaze or sprinkle them with erythritol, they’re perfect as is. Thank you again and Happy Holidays!!

The post says this expired yesterday, but I just saw you tweet about it, so… on the off-chance it counts, here I am. 🙂 My favorite cookies are orange cream cookies, which I found the recipe for in a Betty Crocker holiday cookie book a few years ago. They’re divine, and a great departure from all the chocolate and fudge that’s usually around.

I totally missed the contest, but have a question about the recipe. Is there a non-nut substitute for almond flour? Maybe a combination of whey protein and coconut flour? The nut flour is too much for the hubby’s system…I will take a stab at a substitute myself and let you know how it goes, but if you have a suggestion I would love to hear it.

These cookies sound delightful and what a sweet tribute to your father. My dad would have loved these too. Next week is my baking week and I’ve added these to my list of “Carolyn’s cookies”. Seriously..all the recipes are yours. My family is a huge fan of yours!! Merry Christmas to you and your family! ❤️

I almost dropped my tablet this morning when I saw this post. I am in my early seventies and reading this, too, brings back deep nostalgia for me. I made these every Christmas with my 3 daughters and what fun we had trying to get them hot from the pan into the 1st coat of powdered sugar without breaking them and then into our mouths without burning ourselves. As they cooled we always rolled them a second time in the icing sugar and then left them to set up on a wire rack. Have missed my grown girls so much; making these tomorrow to bring back some special memories and, for that, I thank you.

Thanks so much for sharing this recipe! it’s very similar to one that my grandma used to make with hazelnuts and that my father, who passed away a year ago around this time, loved. I’m sorry to hear that you lost your dad, too.

I’m going to use your recipe and sub in toasted hazelnuts. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I just wanted to follow up to say that I made these with the hazelnut and the flavor was a spot on match to my family recipe. However, I was trying to cut back on the amount of swerve I was using in the recipe, since I was planning to dust them with swerve confectioners and didn’t want an overload of cooling, so I used allulose for the cookie part and they didn’t crisp up. Do you think the allulose would have kept them from getting crispy?

Aside, for a handful of them, I added cinnamon and cardamom to the dusting swerve and it was an absolutely delicious complement to the hazelnut cookie.

Once again, I want to thank you for your site, recipes and advice. I have made the most delicious and memorable Christmas meals with your help.

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year! I look forward to more of your creations in 2019.

Hi Linda, I am just beginning to play with allulose myself and yes, I am finding that it affects the consistency of baked goods. Swerve is non-hygroscopic, which means it doesn’t attract moisture. Allulose and other sweeteners like Bocha Sweet do attract moisture. That’s why they help caramel sauce and ice cream stay soft but they aren’t so great for crisp cookies.

I have wonderful memories of my mom’s Christmas cookies and these are one of them. I would sneak into the dinning room and “sample” a few when she wasn’t looking. I hesitate trying keto dessert recipes because they don’t always taste good but these are exactly the way I remembered them! Thank you so much!

Hi I am a bit confused! How many cookies in total should this recipe make? If each serving is 2 cookies, would the total number of cookies made = 20 and with 2 cookies per serving there are 10 total servings? Or does the recipe make 40 cookies with 2 cookies per serving for a total of 20?!!!

Having baked for a while, I always wonder about one direction for keto baking. Normally with butter and sugar, instructions often say “cream together” and this is to break the crystal structure of the sugar down (I believe). I find when baking with a sugar substitute like Swerve granular, I find it very hard to get that “cream” texture. The instructions for keto baking will often say mix until “light and fluffy”. I don’t know about anyone else, but this seems to never quite happen for me. The resulting product therefore still has a granular texture. Any suggestions for how to achieve “light and fluffy”?

Creaming butter and real sugar or another granular sweetener is NOT to break down the crystalline structure at all. It is to beat air bubbles into the butter. Many recipes beyond keto also say “until light and fluffy”. It serves exactly the same purpose. You need to beat for 2 to 3 minutes, depending on the power of your mixer. Stand mixers are more powerful and will do it more quickly.

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Secrets to Keto Baking

Tips and tricks to delicious and healthy recipes!

Looking for the best low carb recipes? You've come to the right place! I'm Carolyn, a major carnivore and an unrepentant sweet tooth. Here you will find all you need to enjoy the low carb keto lifestyle to the fullest! Read more